This invention relates to paper feeding mechanisms.
A relatively slow but highly reliable paper feeding mechanism is required in one type of facsimile transmitter which has a hopper for holding stack of sheets and which feeds the sheets one at each time into a scanner. The hopper can be oriented in a largely vertical direction, and rollers at the bottom of the hopper can engage one sheet at a time to feed it to the scanner. A paper feeding mechanism of this general type is described in detail in U.S. Pat. No. 3,545,742 issued Dec. 8, 1970 to the assignee of the present patent application. One type of problem that sometimes arises with this type of feeding mechanism is that a pair of sheets may tend to stick together, which can prevent the bottommost sheet from dropping against a feed roller, or which can cause two sheets to be fed even though a separation roller is provided to reduce this possibility. Sheets can tend to stick together where there is a high humidity or where the sheets have a static electric charge as where they are Xerox or other electrostatic type copies. A simple device that reduces the possibility of sheets sticking together so as to prevent the feeding of no sheet or the feeding of two sheets at once, would increase the reliability of the feeding mechanism.